20,000 students entered America's civics bee. A Colorado middle-schooler won it — and a $100,000 education prize

Peter Daniell, a middle school student from Broomfield, Colorado, has won the 2026 National Civics Bee Championship, topping a field that began with 20,000 students in 240 communities. Fifty-two finalists — from every state, Washington, D.C. and American Samoa — met in Washington on October 14 for team presentations, a head-to-head gauntlet, interviews and a final buzzer round, televised for the first time on C-SPAN. Daniell takes home the Bill Daniels National Civics Award and a $100,000 education savings plan; the runners-up, from Florida and Michigan, receive $25,000 and $15,000. His own takeaway was a grown-up one: most challenges don't have simple answers, and listening to different perspectives helped him grow. The bee, run by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation since 2023, exists to make civics — how government works and how citizens take part — a subject young people compete in, like sport.

SDG 4 · Quality education — Mechanism: institutional program